In the recent past, vehicular equipment has been provided to enable the reception by the driver of positional location services through a combined voice and data cellular phone equipped with a GPS receiver input, enabling the driver to call a central service center over a personal cellular phone to provide directions, safety services or security services to the driver of the vehicle. Among such products are “Onstar” by General Motors, the Ford “Rescu”, and “Mercedes Benz Carin”, among others. The current industry requires the owner of the car to pay a hardware fee for a vehicular telephone and GPS equipment, an activation fee for this second phone, a recurring monthly fee (which varies from $20-$25.00), and, additionally, a fee for usage, such as paying for the call by mitigated against the anticipated, but not as yet currently attained, commercial success hoped for in these products. The after-market also has been offering a combined voice and data cellular phone with a GPS module to accomplish these services in the same manner.
In accordance with a novel concept presented in my copending application Ser. No. 09/235,606, filed Jan. 20, 1999 for Improved Method Of And System For Portable Cellular Phone Voice Communication And Positional Location Data Communication Using The Cellular Phone Network Control, on the other hand, through a novel separation of voice and data aspects of the equipment, radio channels and services, the inhibiting charges and costs underlying present-day offerings are eliminated, and an expanded concept promising much wider acceptance of this technology, now appears in the offing.
That concept takes advantage, in its preferred low cost form, of the use of just one phone using the drivers existing cellular phone for the voice communication path, and the control channel of the cellular phone network for the data transmission path.
Specifically, a user calls the control center over the voice channel or link of the cellular telephone network to request information, such as, for example, location or directions. Upon receipt of the voice request along the radio voice channel, and upon PIN or other verification, the control center, using a separate radio data channel (preferably the facilities of the cellular network control channel in said copending application), sends a radio trigger signal along such separate data channel to a GPS receiver and transponder (transceiver) module in the consumer's vehicle to activate the GPS receiver to receive positional navigation location signals from the GPS satellite constellation. Such are processed in the module microprocessor of the transceiver module and activates the module transponder transmitter to send the resulting vehicle location data information back to the network operations control center via the data channel. Upon receipt of such vehicle location data, the network operations control center associates, coordinates or “marries” such with the appropriate consumer or user voice call request received along the cellular phone voice channel, and then communicates the requested positional or other service information data back to the consumer in the vehicle via the voice cellular phone channel. Thus, through the use of two different communication channels to provide voice on one and service data only on the other, there is only one telephone required by the consumer or user and only one telephone bill involved in the delivery of the services through marrying the voice and data at the control center.
Underlying the present invention is the realization, however, that, though perhaps not so cost-effective, other communications links or paths than the cellular telephone network control channel can be used for each or both of the data and voice components of this “one-phone” type of operation with the control center.